H04035 CHARLES RAYMOND AND " THE FACE AT THE CASEMENT" 5/18/04 HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE
From: ? schweikr@localnet.com
Subject: Charles Raymond and "The Face at the Casement"
Date: May 18, 2004 8:16:58 AM PDT
A recent exchange of messages with another Forum member
prompts me to ask whether any Forum members can resolve some of
the conflicting views of J.O. Bailey and F.B. Pinion on the possible
role Charles Raymond might or might not have played in the
composition of Hardy's "The Face at the Casement" and in his
A Pair of Blue Eyes? I am trying to make sense of their arguments.
J.O. Bailey, The Poetry of Thomas Hardy: A Handbook and Commentary,
Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1970, pp. 272-3:
"'The Face at the Casement' seems to narrate a personal experience. The
mention of the garth (churchyard) of 'sad St Cleather' and 'that May eve'
indicate the place and time of the action. St. Clether (so spelled) is a village in
Cornwall just off the road between Launceston and Camelford, about eight
miles east of St Juliot Rectory, the home of Emma Gifford. In May, 1871, Hardy
'enjoyed another visit to Cornwall.'"
"[Kenneth] Phelps has supplied facts that tend to relate the poem to Hardy's
courtship. He says that the poem 'recalls a visit with Emma by pony chaise to the
home of her former suitor, then dying from consumption. . . . A headstone in the
churchyard marks the grave of Charles Raymond, who died of consumption in
December, 1873, aged 38. . . . Charles Raymond was a master miller at
Lewannick, a parish 4 miles S.W. of Launceston and Emma Gifford may well
have met him when riding her pony from Bodmin, her home from 1860 to 1868. In
1864 Raymond married Mary Jenkins, daughter of a master mason . . . . If Emma
had followed the career of her old suitor, she would have known of his marriage
and fatal illness. " [Reference to Kenneth Phelps, Annotations by Thomas Hardy
in His Bibles and Prayer-Book, St. Peter Port, Guernsey: Toucan Press, 1966.]
Bailey also notes that the story of Felix Jethway, Elfride's dead suitor in A Pair of
Blue Eyes, may be patterned in part on Charles Raymond.
F.B. Pinion, A Commentary on the Poems of Thomas Hardy, London: Macmillan,
1976, pp. 95 and 269:
"Facts put forward in support of the view that Emma Clifford had a suitor at St Clether,
a village about seven miles from St Juliot, are unconvincing. He married in 1864, and
Emma did not live at St Juliot or near it until 1868. [Here Pinion adds the following
endnote: " Even if Emma showed interest in the dying of the clergyman's consumptive
son (aged twenty-three) at St Clether, the ballad story is still implausible."] Hardy's
rather implausible story could be founded on the jealousy he experienced in August 1870
(see 'The Young Churchwarden'). Jealousy plays an important part in A Pair of Blue Eyes."
Pinion goes on to point out (as Bailey does not) that the quotation from the Song of
Solomon at the end of "The Face at the Casement," "jealousy is cruel as the grave,"
is also used as the epigraph to Chapter 38 of A Pair of Blue Eyes.
That Raymond was Emma's suitor, and the associated suggestions that "The
Face at the Casement" and A Pair of Blue Eyes were in part inspired by that
supposed relationship are, of course, little more than the kinds of speculations
one would expect from Deacon and Coleman. Still, the arguments presented by
Bailey and Pinion do raise for me three specific questions, and one general one,
that I hope some members of the Forum may be able to help with:
(1) Bailey says Raymond died at age 38; Pinion says age 23. When did
Raymond die, and how old was he then? Or are Bailey and Pinion really
talking about two different persons?
(2) Bailey says that "Emma Gifford may well have met [Raymond at Lewannick] when
riding her pony from Bodmin, her home from 1860 to 1868." Pinion says that "Emma
did not live at St Juliot or near it until 1868," implying, of course, that Bodmin was a
ride of such distance from Lewannick that Emma was not likely to have met
Raymond. I calculate the distance from Bodmin to Lewannick to be about 15 miles,
one way. Would Emma be taking 30-mile pony rides over Bodmin Moor alone?
(3) If Raymond was a miller at Lewannick, why was he buried at St Clether, which,
I calculate, is (by road) some eight miles away? Launceston would be much closer,
and on the way to St Clether. Did he have other associations with St Clether?
(4) Finally--a more general question: the arguments of Phelps and
Bailey seem to me to be based on nothing more than the circumstantial detail Hardy
provided in his poem--the time and place of the action. Has there been some additional
information since adduced to support their contention about some connection with Charles
Raymond that I'm not aware of?
Bob Schweik
Robert Schweik
University Distinguished Teaching Professor Emeritus
Department of English
State University of New York
Fredonia, NY 14063
USA
schweik@fredonia.edu
schweikr@localnet.com
----------
From: patrick@prassociates.co.uk
Subject: RE: Charles Raymond and "The Face at the Casement"
Date: May 18, 2004 10:26:34 AM PDT
(2) Bailey says that "Emma Gifford may well have met [Raymond at Lewannick] when
riding her pony from Bodmin, her home from 1860 to 1868." Pinion says that "Emma
did not live at St Juliot or near it until 1868," implying, of course, that Bodmin was a
ride of such distance from Lewannick that Emma was not likely to have met
Raymond. I calculate the distance from Bodmin to Lewannick to be about 15 miles,
one way. Would Emma be taking 30-mile pony rides over Bodmin Moor alone?
From: rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu
Subject: RE: Charles Raymond and "The Face at the Casement"
Date: May 19, 2004 9:09:29 PM PDT
Hardy's women so often roamed freely and alone (Bathsheba to Bath, by night
-- 70 miles?; Tess to Flintcombe Ash -- 25 miles ? Eustacia-- infinite
miles) that it suggests chaperoning might well have had more to do with an
ostentatious, middleclass display of propriety and affluence than with the
protection of endangered, lone-travelling women (and forget seducers. If
they
could get into Jane Austen's living room they could get in anywhere) .
Rosemarie
----------